I wrote most of this about a month ago. It originated as a tangential comment in the previous post, but it got too long and out of hand, so I extracted it and set it aside to post separately later. Then Benzene went on hiatus for a month, as it sometimes does.

Nothing else has been posted since then, so the antecedent post is still the one just below this. Discussing the twisted logic whereby Saudi Arabia is labeled a "moderate" state, it occurred to me that it's a similar logic that labels Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani a "moderate" Iranian leader.

Iranian politics is one of my favorite topics. I honestly can't think of another nation where politics is more interesting than in Iran. Indeed, it was pursuit of a discussion of Iranian politics, started on other blogs, that led directly to the birth of Benzene 4. If I'm a little wary of posting more on the subject here, it's because I know I come across as being something of an expert, and at the same time I know that I'm really not. On the other hand, a look at discussions of Iran on other Internet forums — even intelligent ones — makes it clear that I can't help but raise the average. (For an example, see the postscript.) Still, if there's anyone out there reading this who knows better — and I can think of a couple who might well — please feel free to set me straight if I get anything wrong.

Like Talleyrand, Rafsanjani is his Revolution's great survivor. He's a complicated figure, not easy to label. A founding member of the Islamic Republican Party, he helped put into place the quasi-republican constitutional authoritarian system that governs Iran to this day. Unlike several of his IRP co-founders, he survived the slaughters of 1981. He then went on to serve two terms as president. But the presidency — an office which Rafsanjani had helped to weaken when it was held by liberal nationalist Abolhassan Bani-Sadr — was never his main source of power, just as it is not the source of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's power today.

It was Rafsanjani who stabilized the victorious IRP government in the early 1980s by making peace with the United States — unofficially, of course. The alliance secured, America supplied Iran with weapons, diverted from other programs and sold via Israel. Yes, I said alliance. Even though each nation publicly vilified the other, and diplomatic relations were still officially severed (as they are to this day), the presidents of America and Iran cooperated. These secret and illegal dealings were no more popular in Iran than they were in America, so when word got out (the "Iran-Contra affair"), President Rafsanjani was in legal and political hot water in Iran just as Reagan was in America. He survived it in pretty much the same way: he used aggressive spin control and political power to prevent any further investigation until eventually the public lost interest in the scandal.

After Ayatollah Khomeini died, he was succeeded as Supreme Leader[*] by Ali Khamenei, and Rafsanjani was a key supporter in making it a smooth transition. Some assert that Rafsanjani himself is the true power behind the throne and has been for decades. True or not, there's no doubt that Rafsanjani has prospered under the regime. Year after year he has managed to enrich himself, so that now he is the richest man in Iran.

[* In the past year or so, I've noticed that the generic-sounding title "Supreme Leader" has become the English-language press's near universal choice of label for the peculiar office of constitutional autocrat created by the Iranian revolution. In spite of the fact that it does not accurately translate either of the constitutional titles — rahbare enqelab ("leader of the Revolution") and maghame rahbari ("leadership authority") — nor the popular term from Khomeini's political philosophy (which I used to use here in Benzene) — vali e faqih ("guardian jurist") — it seems a fine label to me, particularly given the lack of any good alternative, so I am happy to adopt it, initial caps and all.]

Although he's not immoderate like Saudi Arabia, it's not clear what is moderate about Rafsanjani either. He's plainly happy with the system of authoritarian rule by a religious oligarchy, though one has to suspect that his preference has more to do with power than with religion or ideology. Like Supreme Leader Khamenei, Rafsanjani is a politician first and a cleric second. I think that's something that many Americans fail to appreciate. We see a guy in a turban with "ayatollah" in front of his name, so we think of him as a religious leader, which in our American context suggests someone like Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell. We know that under the Islamic Republic church and state are not separate, so we imagine the state being run by a bunch of church guys.

And so it is. Sort of. The point we miss is that the non-separation works the other way, too. It's not so much that the sort of men who resemble American religious leaders pursue politics in Iran. Even more so, it's that the sort of men who resemble American politicians pursue religious studies in Iran. Yes, Rafsanjani and Khamenei are ayatollahs (though Khamenei bore quite a bit of criticism from more established ayatollahs who considered him a feeble ayatollah-come-lately). Of course they are. In Iran, that is the path to political power. Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, and Barack Obama are all lawyers. Does that mean America is run by lawyers. Well, I suppose it does, sort of.

As we saw in the last post, "moderate" means pro-American. What makes Rafsanjani "moderate", then, is that he likes to do business with the United States. Rafsanjani is a technocrat. He believes in scientific and economic progress. He believes in free trade and free markets — at least in the same sense that any plutocrat does, ie, he is pro-growth so long as it doesn't upset the economic status quo. That makes him attractive to American interests, regardless of where he stands on issues like religious law, civil rights, or open elections.

In the 2004 presidential election, with all the liberal and reformist parties banned from running, the way was cleared for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to become the front-runner. His nearest rival was none other than Rafsanjani, who had sat out for a term but was now returning to try for a third time. Ahmadinejad ran as a populist, and the anti-American rhetoric for which he is now so notorious is an expression of public hostility to Rafsanjani. Leaders like Rafsanjani, who have dominated Iranian politics for most of the past 20 years (yes, the "moderates" have been in control), are generally perceived by the public to be corrupt, pro-rich, and incidentally pro-American. With Rafsanjani as a foil, the populist opportunist Ahmadinejad had no trouble harnessing all three complaints and making them one.

This is an interesting development in Iranian politics, and a worrisome one. Anti-Americanism is a popular theme in many parts of the world (including several of our European allies). Yet for all the spleen between the two countries officially, the Iranian public has not been particularly anti-American, especially not since the Revolution.

I mentioned that Ahmadinejad's power does not come from the office of presidency. In Iran, a president is only as powerful as whatever power base he used to secure the position. That was true for relatively weak Bani-Sadr and Khatami as well as for relatively strong Khamenei and Rafsanjani, and now it's true for Ahmadinejad as well. Ahmadinejad's primary power base is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. According to the Constitution, the Revolutionary Guard's supreme commander is the Supreme Leader, but it's not quite so simple. Like the Sultan's janissaries or Caesar's Praetorian Guard, the Revolutionary Guard is a special military force separate from the main army. And like them, it is a political force of its own. Also like them, Guardsmen have branched out into a wide variety of business, so that in a way the guard is sort of like a mafia. The Guard is the mob, and the mob's candidate is Ahmadinejad. This is the horse he has ridden to power, and it's not at all clear which one controls the other.

Ahmadinejad's constituency is the urban poor. It is they who have responded to his messages of economic populism, anti-corruption, and anti-Americanism. They lack the political clout of the Revolutionary Guard or the bureaucracy of satisfied mullahs, or even the genuinely religious community of Qom, but they too are Ahmadinejad's base.

Rudy Giuliani has said — and presumably he speaks for many others — "I don't want to Ahmadinejad get his hands on a nuclear weapon." Giuliani has phrased the question in various ways at various campaign stops, but I think this is the correct one: We don't want Ahmadinejad to get his hands on a nuclear weapon. Obviously, we don't want anyone new to build a nuclear weapon, just as a matter of non-proliferation. But the second half of the equation is that whatever sort of arsenal Iran has, we don't want someone like President Ahmadinejad to control it. Right now, he does not. He does not control Iran's policy, and if things are allowed to run the way the way they've been going lately, he's not likely to any time soon.

But there's a lot of things that could be done to mix that up. For example, President Bush has proposed having the Islamic Revolutionary Guard officially declared a "specially designated global terrorist" (an idea which was endorsed in a recent Washington Post editorial), on the grounds that a foreign-legion-like branch of the Guard (the Quds Force) has been aiding various terrorist militias in Iraq and elsewhere. As pugnacious as it sounds, this designation is actually just a bureaucratic move that authorizes the U.S. government to impose economic sanctions on foreign companies doing business with the Revolutionary Guard.

Predictably, both proponents and opponents of the idea are representing it as a move to "get tough with Iran". Returning to my theme which launched Benzene years ago, the problem with nearly every American discussion of Iran is that it treats "Iran" as a single entity, which it surely is not. Suppose we do impose economic sanctions on the Revolutionary Guard. What I want to know is what that's going to do to the balance of power in Iran. Is it going to weaken the Guard by cutting off its resources? Is it going to bolster Ahmadinejad's faltering support in the political center by making the Guard seem more sympathetic?

But I've gone on too long. That would be a subject for another post ... if I knew the answer. And I don't.

Addendum: Here's an excellent Q and A with Robin Wright.

As if in illustration my point — and, indeed, prompting me to take this essay off the shelf and finally post it — today I see this post on Andrew Sullivan's blog.

I'm hopelessly out of touch with current events, so I didn't even know this had happened, but apparently the Iranian government produced a lengthy program about the Holocaust in which Jews are portrayed sympathetically, and the program was aired on state-run television. This is certainly an interesting development, but the two blogs Sullivan quotes are beside themselves with bafflement, as if it were some sort of inexplicable contradiction. The first of them says, "I can't quite figure out why the mullahs did this."

Well, here's a tip. Start out by realizing that there are a great many mullahs in Iran, and they are by no means uniform in their opinion (the bounty of God!). Then remember that President Ahmadinejad isn't the supreme leader. From there it sort of falls into place. The leaders of Iran aren't dense. They know full well that Ahmadinejad has been running around denying that the Holocaust even occurred. This television program is no coincidence; someone is putting the president in his place. (And Rafsanjani has a history of being friendly with Israel.)

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